Updating the Moccasin Telegraph: Indigenous People Embrace Digital

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Originally published in TEACH Magazine, Digital Citizenship Special Issue, 2020

By Shelby Lisk

As a kid, I only ever saw my community, Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, make headlines when there was a highway or railroad blockade. The public knew us for protests, cigarettes, and gas. Even from a young age, I knew there was more to that story and there still is.

Most media content about Indigenous communities are created by non-Indigenous people, for their consumption. This leads to the reproduction of the stereotypes we’ve seen time and time again. Accomplished Anishinaabe reporter Duncan McCue coined the WD4 rule, which has become ubiquitous in the Indigenous journalism world. In a CBC article, he shares the story: “An elder once told me the only way an Indian would make it on the news is if he or she were one of the 4Ds: drumming, dancing, drunk or dead.” (He added the “W” for warrior.)

In 2011, Professors Carmen Robertson and Mark Anderson co-authored Seeing Red: A History of Natives in Canadian Newspapers, an examination of Indigenous representation in Canadian newspapers from 1869 to 2009, and will be releasing an updated version in 2021.

“Things have not improved that much,” Robertson said on CBC’s Unreserved in November. “The stereotypes that we found in the nineteenth century are still being reproduced but maybe different descriptor words are being used.” The updated book will include contemporary examples, such as the reportage around Cree Red Pheasant First Nation resident, Colten Boushie’s death, in 2016.

Retired journalist and Professor John Medicine Horse Kelly and Professor Miranda Brady argue in their book, We Interrupt This Program: Indigenous Media Tactics in Canadian Culture, that “whoever controls or subverts the content matters in the meaning-making process, as do varied audiences and modes of production access, and circulation.” We can’t rely on one source or medium to reach people.

Within the classroom, it is important to share content that doesn’t position Indigenous people in the past but brings them into the present and future. The division between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Canada grows smaller through education, where those who have been dehumanized are now seen as whole people, with beautiful cultures, amazing senses of humour, artistic talents, and voices with important things to say.

The places to find these voices are not within mainstream texts but within spaces where the non-Indigenous teacher or student may be taking the seat of the one feeling “othered.” But that is where the real learning starts—with listening.

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Shelby Lisk is a multidisciplinary artist and journalist from Kenhtè:ke (Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory). She currently lives in Ottawa, where she works as a multimedia journalist, capturing news and current affairs stories that affect Indigenous communities across the province.

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Shelby Lisk
Shelby Lisk
Shelby Lisk is a multidisciplinary artist and journalist from Kenhtè:ke (Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory). She currently lives in Ottawa, where she works as a multimedia journalist, capturing news and current affairs stories that affect Indigenous communities across the province.

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